The Black Prince, page 15
and with a suddenness akin to grace, the whole scene changes in his eye. The men are not abandoning the hedge, but moving to better positions within it. Audley’s charge, following up another volley of arrows, and another volley, is routing the French left flank. The marshals’ battalions are almost upon them and he understands that there is a third thing, beyond the unyielding authority of the Father that says die if you must, and beyond the pity of the son who says let me die so you may live. It is a mysterious third quality, imperceptible to sight or taste or feeling, yet somehow palpable as well. And it works through the whole body of the English army. It turns the myriad clustering mass of I into a We. It says: only in We do we live forever. Edward’s excitement is so intense now it almost closes his throat and prevents him breathing.
The whole force works as one
Archers
Archers loose from the hedgerow, from the bushes. Arrows snap instantly into the unarmoured rear flanks and back legs of horses. Horsemen tumble and fall, and are ridden over by those behind them. In minutes the space between the two bodies of bowmen is dammed up with fallen men; but the force behind is too large, its momentum too great, to be able to stop. Men and horses keep piling in. Arrows sting and whisper in the morning air.
This time, louder: Saint George, cries the Prince, and the men behind him echo and
KING JEAN THE GOOD
It is no crime, nor sin, to read books. It is no sin to be able to play an instrument, he thought. None dare say it to his face, but they thought him a pale and feeble son compared to his father. Yet Philip had lost Cressy and so France, and bankrupted the nation; and he, Jean, had spent ten years drawing that nation back together again. He had deferred the royal debts not once but twice, and that took more courage than riding pell mell into battle – a different kind of courage, for sure, but a courage nonetheless. These old nobles with their heads full of chivalric romance and fables of knights fighting blatantbeasts did not seem to realise that nations ran on money, on money, only on money, and money was hard to come by. The plague had attenuated the peasantry worse than it had the nobility, and the fields grew half what they used to. Everything cost more, and armies cost most of all, and he read books to learn how to win wars, not how to lose in a glory of pointless chivalric bravery, like the old King of Bohemia after whom he had been named. Riding blind into battle to die, very noble but very, very foolish too – they were all riding blind into battle all the time, and that was why they were always losing, and that was why France was in so terrible a state.
Not this time. No, no, no. He read about Alexander the Large, and Pompey the Big and Caesar the one and only, the unique and the marvellous, whose horse had toes instead of hooves and who lay with boys and men like a Biblical sodomite, yet who won battles, by God, won battles whenever they presented themselves. You did not win a battle by riding in blind and trusting to your own boldness. You planned it. You made sure you assembled a larger force – much larger, if you could muster it. You ensured your men were well-fed and well-watered, with the best armour that borrowed money could buy. You had the knights tell the ensigns to drill the bastards, marching there, marching here, until a thousand boots struck the ground with a single thump. You scouted the land. You learned from your previous errors.
The English were mere bandits. The English were robbers and rapists and thieves, the sort of men that any good lord hanged from a gibbet on a Saturday as a warning to the others to obey the law. They hurt his country, and pilfered from the peasantry, and burned a few towns. But now Jean had them. They were stuck, like a pig trying to squeeze under a fence and trapped by its own fat belly. Jean himself had ridden to the front of his formation to see: a thorny hedge would stop them being able to retreat, and to the right the land was debatable, pocked with raspy bushes before giving way to the woods. No army could pass that way in good order, and if they tried to run then his knights would have it easy, riding them down, bashing their brains out. English Prince Edward was all reputation and no reality. He had picked a terrible position for his small army, and now Jean’s much larger army would crush him.
He slept poorly, and was pacing up and down his tent before dawn. No matter: he would sleep well once victory was claimed, picked up from the ground like a discarded trifle. He stood outside and watched daylight enlarge out of ruddy quiet. It was beautiful, an augur. Sweet dimness broadening into the red of his own oriflamme, and then a glorious rosé yellow blue, growing over the head of the doomed English. Soon enough it was hazy light, and he was hectoring his people. To arms! To arms!
Wideawake.
Up on his horse, he gave out orders once more, but he was only repeating what he had told his marshals a dozen times before. It had the beautiful precision of inevitability.
—Saint Denis!
—Saint Denis! roared the army.
The whole enormous organism pulsed into life. He had borrowed a fortune, and it had not been easy to get the money. He had gathered the money and then he had spent the money. Some had gone to merchants and traders and smiths and all the petty people who supply an army. A great trunk of coin went to Douglas, the Scot: not buying his service, of course, merely thanking him as one prince to another for the part he would play in defeating their common enemy. A great pile of wealth had gone into the purses of German mercenaries. It would all come right. Jean understood, as his father never did, that money works by a different logic to everything else. The money he spends today will return to him, like birds flocking north in the springtime, when he has the Prince of Wales in custody, and a herald has sailed to the English with a demand for two, or two and a half, or – why not – three million crowns in ransom. Money will flood back to France. The fields will become fruitful again, and industry will revive, and order and honour return to the state.
The monster he had created shuddered into life.
—Great King, Geoffroi de Charny called, riding towards him. He had been given the honour of carrying the oriflamme on this day. The English are attacking to the south.
—So attack them back, said Jean, his voice high and querulous. Onward! Onward!
Somebody else rode in: the Count of Eu. My lord, my king, the English are retreating.
—That was easier than even I thought, Jean declared. He thought of the cheering there would be in Paris, when he paraded his booty through the streets.
—They are pulling their baggage train back, and their main force is in disarray.
—Strike now! Strike! Now, I want to join the battle, I want to be in at the kill.
So he rode forward through cheering troops and a swell of pride in France, God’s land and his, and the restoration of his and his people’s honour. It took a while to pick through the mass with his troop. Then he came further forward and saw a mass of dead. These must be the English dead. Beside them were many banners, trampled and toppled, and all of them were French. How could his people abandon their colours in so dishonourable a manner! Were they so eager to crush the English, that …
Wait a moment.
—My king! My king!
Who was this? Yelling. There was a long, drawn-out, sucking sound, as if the very sky were drawing in breath, and then the collective breath was expelled in a great hiss. The serpent in the garden. Bowmen filling the sky with their seed. Arrows clattered and hailed down all around. One struck the king’s own shield, and skeetered away. Another lodged in his charger’s plate armour, but thankfully did not penetrate. Around him men were squealing and writhing, and horses were tumbling.
No.
—My king! My king! We must go back. You are in danger.
The hissing again. Panic swelled behind Jean’s ribs, and he rode his horse back in amongst his men. What is happening? he cried. What is going on? There was a lot of shouting and yelling and screaming, from, it seemed, every side.
—Great king, gasped the Duke of Normandy, his own brother, but with blood all over his face and a left arm that dangled limply at his side. There has never been a battle like it, in the history of war!
—What are you talking about, brother?
A wave of horsemen pulsed across the battlefield, and Jean was separated from his brother. His personal guard were drawn away, and struggled to re-form around him. It was not possible for Jean to see exactly what was happening. Whole vision was denied him. All around were men, surging, and jostling, and up ahead the sky was stitched with arrows. A crush of foot soldiers pressed behind him, and his horse, spooked and whinnying, stepped forward through the mass of men behind him. Everybody was being drawn forward as if by some riptide of humanity. His horse did not like treading on the bodies of the dead, but there was no help for that.
Frustration burst his heart. Yelling, incoherent, he began hacking at the men around him with his sword, even though they were his own men. He had to break out from this crowd of fools and knaves and – my king my king somebody was shouting.
A corridor opened amongst the seething humanity, and he rode his horse along it. He came out amongst a flat space cobbled with corpses. His charger did not wish to tread upon these prone human bodies, but he spurred the beast on. French bodies. German bodies. Where were the dead English?
—My king!
Who was this? One more panic-faced noble.
—Slain. The Marshal of France, Highness, he is slain.
—Jean de Clermont? the King replied, as if there could be another marshal of France.
—My king!
—This is proving an unlucky battlefield for those called Jean.
—The Count of Eu is sore wounded, sire, and captured by the English. Geoffroi de Charnay is killed, my king, and the oriflamme he carried taken by the English. Your brother, Prince Philip, has been captured.
—We shall free these noblemen, all, Jean yelled, when we defeat the English. Advance and take them back! But he thought to himself: not the dead. We shall never take the dead back.
A knot of English foot soldiers was running at them, leaping over the dead bodies, axes and swords. Drawn by the prospect of capturing the King of France himself. Six men of his guard drew and charged them, and Jean, startled, galloped with them, and hacked about with his own sword. Four, five Englishmen fell to the ground, howling, or silent, and blood splashed the royal leg.
—We have lost thousands, sire!
—And so? We have tens of thousands more – why are they not grinding the English under their heels? Where are the Germans?
The sky hissed, and hissed, and the mounted knights shrank into their saddles. The tuneless choir of many men screaming, weeping, gasping.
—My king, said somebody leaning in close. Who was this? It was the Duke of Orléans. It was the Duke, and he was saying something. Jean concentrated, and the words swam into comprehension. The Germans are broken, the Duke was saying. They tried to move against the English archers, but those bowmen drew so fast and fired so fast they could not approach. The Count of Nassau, the Count of Salzburg, the Count of Neyde, all dead.
—I gave Nassau eleven thousand gold crowns, with my own hands, cried Jean. He was weeping now, tears were running on his face. I might as well have tumbled the coins into the Seine. Duke, ride back and bring the rearguard into the fray. Take the Dauphin with you, my lord; we cannot allow him to be captured by the English too. Take him back to the camp, and return with all the men in the rearguard, every one. Bring them quickly. A gold louis for each English head, tell them!
The Duke needed no second order. He rallied his men and rode off, west, away from the fighting. He continued riding west. The rearguard saw him pass through, and many knights rode with him, and they rode wild for the far horizon, and so they did not die that day.
—The Duke of Athens, the Constable of France, is killed by arrows, my lord!
—It is impossible, Jean said, to his right-hand horseman. It cannot be. I am mired in a bad dream and cannot wake. The English could not win, and cannot win, and will not win.
—This is not a safe place, my king.
They rode, and soon came upon the Scotsman, his dark blue banner sluggish in the low breeze and a thousand men-at-arms around him. Douglas had taken a small hillock, and surrounded it with spearmen, and was watching the fight from his horse. The Scots parted to permit King Jean and his guard through.
—We must attack, always attack, my lord of Douglas.
—I have attacked all morning, sir, replied Douglas, in his accented French. The battle has been turned against us.
—Such a thing is not a possible thing, Jean cried, and then pointed and yelled: there! The Black Prince, that’s his helmet! Following the outstretched arm with their gaze the soldiers saw the great lion-helmet bobbing through a combat affray, and a black sword flipping up and cutting down in a mist of blood.
—Charge him! Kill the Prince and the day is ours!
Nobody was listening.
—Did you hear what the Black Prince did, King Jean? Douglas asked. He found the Cardinal’s nephew, Lord Robert of Duras – dead, or nearly dead and finished him off, I don’t know which. Anyway he found the Old Cardinal’s sin, lying there, spreadeagled. Now, the Prince was angry at the Cardinal de Périgord for fighting today, fighting for you, my lord. Yesterday he was pretending to be an emissary for peace, and today he was fighting for you. So he put the body of the Cardinal’s bastard son on a horse with a parchment stuffed in its visor and sent it back to the French camp, so that the Cardinal should know his displeasure, that men of God and emissaries for peace should not fight.
Tears of pure frustration and vexation were making Jean’s vision wobbly.
—Charge, my lord! he shouted. Cut straight through to … but as he said it he looked again, and saw how many English stood between this place and the Prince’s troop.
—Not I, King of France, drawled Douglas. There’s a path free south, and I shall take my men that way. I’ll circle round and come eventually to the coast, and so back to Scotland.
—Then you’ll return my crowns to me, sir, before you depart!
—The crowns are lost, Douglas grimaced. A crown will soon be.
He rode off, and did not look behind him as the King swore and cursed him. His men filed after him, and rode briskly away, as on a parade or in tourney. Jean no longer had the oriflamme, and so rode back to the west to retrieve an alternative, to bring the banner of his house out to the battlefield.
At the camp everything was in confusion. The impossible sentences kept tumbling from people’s mouths. The Count of Tancarville, captured. The Count of Marche and Ponthieu, captured. The Count of Joinville, captured. Guillaume de Melun, Archbishop of Sens, captured. The Duke of Athens, Constable of all France, killed.
—This is old news, Jean snarled. Bring me some new.
—You must retreat, great king. You must ride west.
—This battle has just begun, Jean cried, and his bannerman raised, since the oriflamme had been mislaid, the blue-and-gold chequered blazon of the House of Valois. Defeat was a simple impossibility. It was as if a wolf should take a lamb by the throat, and the lamb knock the wolf’s brains in with its hooves. Or, he thought, as he rode east again, or as if a wolf should begin to swallow the lamb, and choke to death on it.
He found a large force of French soldiers, true Frenchmen, no mercenaries, and their knights had kept them in good order. Jean’s heart lifted: it was not over. Then he heard, or rather felt, a rumbling that made the grass shake, and that transmitted itself through the general clamour and howls of the wounded and the dying. A charge. Jean looked up: two great flanks of English were coming down the slope, from behind the main French army. How had they gotten behind? The rows of men-at-arms at the rear were crumpling, men scattering north and south or falling dead before the assault.
—Majesty, said Jean’s bannerman, and then he added some ghastly guttural tangle of syllables, as if he were mocking his role, or speaking Dutch or Scotch or something. Jean swore at him for his insolence, and then saw that an arrow had struck him from the side, and bisected the profile of his Adam’s apple. Jean saw the flesh puckered in and pushed out, and then watched blood ooze from the wound, and slosh down. The gentleman slid from his horse, and the royal blue banner fell with him.
Panic was now general. Jean could almost smell it. Pick up the banner, he shouted. Somebody pick up the banner. Groans and screams and yells all around. Hundreds were scuttling along the road to Poitiers, hoping to get inside the city and save themselves.
Pick up the banner, he called.
Then, instead of the banner raising, he himself was lowered. His horse was going down, but slowly, as in a dream. It went onto its front knees, and then onto its rear knees, and then slowly slumped to the left. Jean scrambled his leg free, and stood on the ground. There were three arrows in the steed’s neck, bunched close together, the flights like a parody fleur-de-lys.
His personal guard were all dismounting around him, to defend him, swords out. The Count of Dammartin stood closest. Orléans will bring reinforcements, Jean shouted. Horses were approaching. The battle is not over. It is still early in the morning.
—Majesty, said Dammartin, it is late afternoon. We have fought all day.
The time had warped and shrunken around Jean. He could not believe it.
Horses were approaching. In amongst the confusion of voices, words yelled in French and in alien tongues, incoherencies from the dying, came the cry of: surrender, your Majesty. Surrender, Majesty. And here were the horsemen, almost upon them.
—Surrender, Majesty, or you will die.
—Who are you, sir? Jean realised that he was very tired, tired to the very bone. But he held up his sword.
—Majesty, I am Denis of Morbèque, a knight. I was banished from France as a youth for causing the death of a man in an affray in Saint-Omer, and so I have fought with the English for five years, and I have guided them around this land.
—Talkative, aren’t you. Jean lowered his sword. The fight was going out of him.
—You must surrender, Majesty.
